On Dec. 28, Israeli air force missiles destroyed the Islamic University of Gaza. I have visited the university, built with the support of grants from the Ford Foundation and other sources. It was a beautiful place, that day full of young women carrying books, talking in small groups, rushing to class like anywhere else.
Israel bombed it because it said it was a font of radicalism and support for Hamas. Yes, some student groups fervently supported Hamas. There were many student groups, and students spent much time on the Internet, their link to the wider world. At the university, students could major in a wide range of subjects and for a few years have access to the pleasures of higher learning before confronting life in the nearly closed prison that Gaza is today.
In Gaza, malnutrition is widespread and unemployment is nearly universal. Israel does not let Gazans export their produce or manufactured goods. It does not let them out to work, and it does not let them import adequate food and medicine. The strip of land is fenced in, the airport and seaport are closed, and all gates are closed and have been for years. Even students who win fellowships for advanced study more often then not find themselves thwarted by Israel's refusal to let them cross out of Gaza.
Now there is no more university.
I remember some firebrands suggesting in anger that the government bomb UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, and UCLA during the 1960s and early 1970s to end student militancy. Even though violent acts were indeed planned in various corners of these universities, today they are all flourishing institutions. Cooler heads prevailed not only because we value our institutions of higher learning and the futures of our young people, but because we know that bombing and destroying does not lead to social progress.
A better course of action for Israel would be to let Gazans and others travel in and out of the strip; to study and work in the West Bank, Israel and abroad; and to have the same access to the world enjoyed by the Israelis themselves. That would bring an immediate halt to the violence.
-- Nancy Gallagher, Newbury Park
(The writer chairs the Middle East studies program at UCSB. -- Editor)